The most important step in achieving any goals is identifying everything that’s standing in your way. Most people don’t seek out obstacles. It can be tough to get past them and daunting sometimes to even think about them.
For many successful business leaders, though, obstacles are actually a necessity. They come up whenever they create a big vision for the future. The key is not to avoid them, but to use them as an integral part of the solution. What kinds of stories would we have to tell about our lives and successes if we didn’t have obstacles to overcome?
So how do you transform obstacles into a plan for reaching their goals. The thinking process behind it looks like this:
1. Create a vision: Every important action always starts with a vision of somewhere you want to be in the future. Dream it and write it down.
2. Identify the obstacles: Allow yourself to think negatively and highlight everything that lies in between you and achieving your vision.
3. Find transformative solutions: Face those obstacles one at a time and head on to find creative solutions and strategies to overcome them. Don’t be afraid to ask for help, others might be able to see a solution you can’t.
4. Take action. Now, you’re fully prepared to move forward, get the resources you need to take the next step, and start making progress toward your goals.
After you’ve completed the process, you’ll start over again. This is a constant activity you can do throughout any stage of your life or business to continually grow.
Having a big vision is the key to your business success—but you can’t neglect the obstacles. Your vision will help you identify them, letting you see what you need to do to get to where you want to be. A lot of people have trouble dealing with their obstacles when they simply think of them as barriers, so the best thing to do is break the obstacles down into specific elements. If you’ve determined that there are two or three things that need to be overcome, you know what you’re facing and can figure out how to proceed, one at a time.
If all goals were easy and straightforward to achieve, we wouldn’t have the opportunity to grow and improve. Obstacles shouldn’t be avoided; they’re there to help us get bigger and better and to raise our levels of capability and confidence.
